A great performance─The Study of Sanmao

• Main Authors: Chin-yu Wang, 王瑾瑜
• Other Authors: Cheng-Hui Lu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/23126799863044107589

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 中國文學系碩士在職專班 === 99 === Of late, styles of the desert have been prevailing thanks to a popular movie “Sex and the City” hitting the screen. Girls start putting on long skirts, wearing eye-catching earrings, imitating girls from faraway countries with exotic fashion. Little is known that, as early as 1970s, a pretty special woman had already led the “storm of desert.” She was not appealing to the world by either extravagant attire or magnificent settings. By utilizing the words rich in specialty and the concerns embedded in the local area, she had led the readers to enter the foreign land via her writings. Ping Chen (1943 – 1991), originally named Mao-ping Chen, had a more well-known pseudonym that had been so popular for almost twenty years—San Mao. She earned her reputation all over the areas that Chinese people used to live in, with her works being favored by both highly-ranked and proletariat populaces. She ended, however, in committing suicide during her own heydays, resulting in the lack of objective comments to her works of writings. The latest ten years or so, though, the death of San Mao has not terminated readers’ discussions about her; in addition, more and more stories about her have been found out, adding color and mystery back to the writer herself. Of course, the surplus value of the peripheral products has also been increased. If we try to designate San Mao to a certain point on the continuum between popular literature and classical literature, she definitely will be located in an awkward position. In the twenty years or so since her death, San Mao and her works seem to have passed the popular stage, but may not enter the palace of classics. Despite these constraints, though, the trend indeed used to exist. A very unique and not easily-classified writer had used her simple words to fulfill numerous readers’ aspirations for foreign land, for being on the drift, and for rejecting the restrictions imposed by the self. This thesis intends to do a synthesized analysis of the formation of the writer’s charm and trend, on the basis of the characteristics of the writer herself, the spirits presented in the works of writings and the then background of the time. The thesis firstly divides her mysterious life into distinct phases, and combines her works to discuss the relations and spirits between the environment changes and her variant styles. Finally, the article takes into consideration the contemporary literature background as well as popular psychology, to probe into San Mao Phenomenon and the possible reasons behind it.